Environment Ministry Welcomes District Office's Decision in Istrochem Case

Bratislava, 8 July (TASR) - The Environment Ministry respects and welcomes the Bratislava District Office's decision to uphold the prosecutor's protests in the case involving environmental damage at the site of the Istrochem chemical plant in Bratislava, the ministry's communications department has told TASR, pointing out that the ministry wasn't a party to the proceedings. In fact, it was the capital city of Bratislava and its Nove Mesto borough that failed in their roles as parties to the proceedings, stressed the ministry. "The Environment Ministry is not and has never been a party to these proceedings. The failure lies with the parties to the proceedings, namely the capital city and the borough, which could and should have appealed against Bratislava District Office's decision," stated the communications department. The ministry added that the entire process of determining the party liable will now go back to the beginning, stating that it will wait for a new decision from Bratislava District Office, which falls under the Interior Ministry. Under the ministry's amendment to the law on environmental burdens, which was approved by the government in May and is now in Parliament, the state will be given strong powers in pursuing its claims whenever environmental damage is cleared up, stated the ministry, describing these provisions as crucial and expressing hope that the opposition will support the bill. Opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) party MP Tamara Stohlova has said that it's good news that the district office will reconsider responsibility for the remediation of the Istrochem site. She hopes that the office will now act fairly and transparently. "We'll keep a close eye on the entire process to prevent the failures in the past from occurring again," she wrote on social media. The fact that the Bratislava District Office's decisions, which were adopted in 2025 and led to the state assuming responsibility for clearing up the environmental damage at Istrochem, have been annulled, was also welcomed by the extra-parliamentary Democrats party, which described it as a significant success in protecting hundreds of millions of euros of Slovak taxpayers' money. According to Democrats, breaches of the law and serious failures took place both on the part of the district office and of Environment Minister Tomas Taraba (a Slovak National Party/SNS nominee). The party also pointed to a document indicating that Taraba intended to oblige the state and his ministry to remove the environmental damage at the expense of taxpayers, calling on Taraba to withdraw it from the inter-ministerial review procedure for good. In connection with the obligation to clear up pollution at the site of the Istrochem chemicals plant, Prosecutor-General Maros Zilinka stated on social media earlier on Wednesday that the district office has upheld three protests lodged by a regional prosecutor and that its decisions to discontinue proceedings on determining the party liable for the environmental damage have thus been annulled. According to the Prosecutor-General's Office, the proceedings haven't shown that the legal conditions for the state to take responsibility for the clean-up - an obligation that would otherwise be imposed on the liable party - have been met. The former chemicals plant now known as Istrochem was purchased in 2022 by a holding that, at that time, belonged to billionaire and incumbent Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis. Its current owner is a company known as Istrochem Reality. The cost of clearing up the environmental damage at Istrochem is estimated at €350-500 million. jrg/df